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In the article “Ethical Design in the Internet of Things” the authors suggest an ethical and implementable framework allowing users to manage and limit the access to private information gathered by the “Things”. Ethics are discussed to emphasize that every user has a different set of moral values, leading to differences in the desired privacy policies the necessity for customizability where the users are granted a higher degree of “individual freedom and choice”. There are a few challenges the framework needs to overcome. These include, but are not limited to, finding an economic incentive for businesses to implement the framework, giving the user enough information to make a rational decision on the policies and bridging the Digital Divide, the gap between experienced and inexperienced users. Furthermore, the open-source software SecKit is presented, which overcomes all of the previously discussed challenges.

My main issue with this is article is that it could be structured better. Especially having more chapters would benefit understanding and navigating through the article. The introduction chapter should be split up into different aspects, for example “Context” (Baldini et al., page 4) and “Flow of Data” (Baldini et al., page 5).

On page 3, the authors wrote: “The main features shared by these different categories of devices are the almost continuous connectivity through a wide range of wireless communications standards (e.g., WiFi, UMTS, LTE, ZigBee) and the capacity to collect data from the real world (e.g., camera) or to act on the real world (e.g., actuators like a domotic system to regulate the temperature of the house), including from an individual (e.g., a sensor collecting blood pressure readings at any time) or data that often can be related to each other through identification of time and (geo)location.”(Baldini et al., page 3) This sentence is hard to read, since the parenthesis break the flow of the reader. There are too many examples in the parenthesis and also too many parenthesis sections overall. I would split the sentence into two sentences or avoid writing examples at all. Since the examples further the understanding of the reader, splitting up the sentence is the best way to go. An example proposition for the correction would be: “The main features shared by these different categories of devices are the almost continuous connectivity through a wide range of wireless communications standards (e.g., WiFi, UMTS, LTE, ZigBee) and the capacity to collect data from the real world (e.g., camera) or to act on the real world (e.g., actuators like a domotic system to regulate the temperature of the house). Acting on the real world can originate from an individual (e.g., a sensor collecting blood pressure readings at any time) or data that often can be related to each other through identification of time and (geo)location.”

In several sections enumerations are used. For example, see this quote from page 17: “The deployment of the SecKit can be based on different scenarios: (a) the SecKit can be embedded in the design of the IoT device, (b) in the design of the IoT application or (c) can be installed and activated for specific calls and data flows by intercepting the Application Programming Interface (API) calls or the data flows at runtime…” (Baldini et al., page 17). In this and other longer sections, it is very hard to keep track of all the points when each point is presented in multiple lines. Therefore a different structure should be used, like a bullet point list.

In conclusion, I can say that this article has a high contextual and literary quality and there are few things to criticize.

Writing is an essential craft–but few, except professional writers, take the time to develop this skill. Writing clear, concise, and compelling arguments–knowing how to construct and tell a persuasive story–is crucial across industry and the digital world. Well-designed narratives can change the fortunes of a product, community, or company.

Writing Innovation Studio is a new elective at the IT University of Copenhagen. Starting in Spring 2016.